Africa: First Impressions

Greetings from South Africa!

 

We've already been here a week now so there's much to write about, but I want to start at the beginning and describe some of my first impressions upon arriving here in Africa. 

 

We left Brazil last Monday, 16 March.  After arriving at the Sao Paulo airport three and a half hours before our flight, we successfully worked out a problem with our e-tickets and checked in, then got through immigration without issue, even though we didn't have the immigration cards everyone is supposed to turn in upon departure, but which we didn't receive upon entry.  Then we waited in a surprisingly empty airport for our eight and a half hour flight to Johannesburg where we went through the fastest and most hassle free immigration process ever.  They actually did ask for our yellow fever vaccination cards but barely even looked at them upon presentation.  We then had breakfast during our four and a half hour layover before boarding our two hour flight to Cape Town, which took off and arrived on time, landing us in our first African destination at 2:10 p.m. local time.  We are currently nine hours ahead of California time and six hours ahead of East Coast time, which I think puts us in the GMT+1 time zone.

 

While I have to give South African Airways credit for taking care of the problem we had with our e-tickets and for their flights being on time and on schedule (the first flight actually arrived 25 minutes early), I was not impressed with their planes at all.  We had none of the comforts and amenities one would usually expect on an international flight.  I have more leg room on a Southwest flight from San Diego to San Francisco.  There were no individual monitors on the back of the seats in front of you, just the larger monitors set above the middle row of the plane.  At least two of the television monitors were not working so we had to strain to see the next one up.  The staff was very friendly and the food was decent.  We actually had real silverware as opposed to plastic utensils.

 

Some of my first impressions of South Africa:

 

Cars: While I realize they drive on the left side of the road in the UK and figured it would be the same here in South Africa, I have never actually been to the UK or any other country where this is the case so I never had the opportunity to see it for myself.  It's a simple thing, but quite strange upon first seeing it and I still don't think I'm used to it.  When we arrived in Johannesburg, I went outside to have a cigarette and just watched as the cars drove by on the "wrong" side of the road.  Even knowing this is just the way things are in some countries, one of the things I never thought about until we were in our shuttle on the way to the hostel is that, you have to use your left hand to operate the stick shift... and as in most countries outside of the US, most, if not all cars have manual transmissions.  It's hard enough for me to eat with my left hand; I can't imagine using my left hand to operate the stick.  And for someone like me with certain OCD issues, I just cannot accept the dashboard setup and lane stripping here.  They have single broken white lines to separate lanes for traffic in one direction, and also have single broken white lines to separate lanes on two-way streets.  For someone not used to such things, it would be very easy to end up on the wrong side of the road.  I think the US approach of using white stripping to denote one way traffic and yellow stripping to denote two way traffic is much more logical and safer.  I also have to force myself to pay extra careful attention when crossing the street since I'm still not used to traffic coming from the opposite direction. 

 

Languages: Everyone speaks English in South Africa.  Obviously, I knew this and part of me was looking forward to being able to use English again after five months in South America.  The interesting thing, however, is that there are so many more languages spoken regularly here that English is almost never heard amongst locals speaking to themselves.  In restaurants or in shops, we are greeted in English, we have English menus, but when the staff speaks to each other, it is always in another language.  When you see people on the street conversing, it is rarely in English.  I was expecting to hear a lot of Afrikaans, but that is usually only spoken by white locals.  The Blacks generally speak one of at least five other native languages with Zulu and Xhosa seeming to be most common.  The other funny thing is that being here has reinforced something else about language I knew previously: I have a hard time understanding native English speakers if they do not speak American English and a much easier time understanding people who learn English as a second language.  For example, we were in a restaurant with two Germans from our hostel and were served an interesting, but tasty vegetable with our meal.  We asked the waitress what it was and she said it was called "batanot".  She repeated it several times and we repeated it after her, but still had no clue what it actually was.  She explained that it was similar to a pumpkin, so we figured it was some strange vegetable from the squash family.  It wasn't until the German guy we were having dinner with translated and explained to his girlfriend (whose English was not as good) what it was that I finally understood the waitress was saying "butternut", as in butternut squash.  The German's pronunciation was a hell of a lot closer to the American pronunciation and as soon as he said it, I immediately understood.  We all laughed and I just had to concede, I'm not a native English speaker. 

 

Cape Town: Since we left the airport in Johannesburg, it's almost like I have to remind myself that I'm in Africa.  Cape Town is very white, very segregated and very European, especially in areas where tourists go.  In restaurants, I am often the only Black person dining, yet most of the staff is Black.  It's the same in the bars and clubs.  Everyone is still very friendly, and I haven't felt unwelcome or like I was treated any differently at any of these places; it's more my personal awareness of and discomfort with the fact that I'm in Africa, yet I'm surrounded by even more white people than I typically am at home in San Diego.  I'll write a separate blog post about this issue because it is one that has been at the forefront of my mind since I arrived in South Africa.  I also want to talk about the difference between the terms Black and Coloured here in Southern Africa. 

 

Surprisingly Inexpensive: South Africa has been surprisingly cheap compared to other places we've been.  Our hostel is one of the nicest and cheapest we've stayed in and food, even in the most touristy areas, is just ridiculously cheap.  I've had seafood almost everyday because I can have a fish or shrimp dinner in a nice restaurant for $5-7 USD and a nice bottle of South African wine for under $8.  The quality of the food is great, the portions are more than generous and the wine from this country is among the best.  You may be able to find cheaper food in some places in South America, but you will never match the quality for these prices.  We haven't really had to buy anything else so we're not sure how prices of other good compare to other places, but so far, I'm thinking our money will go a long way here. 

 

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Ozell